Wednesday, March 28, 2012

I would rather have someone interesting sit next to me on a
flight than an empty seat, really, even in coach. Belgians are always good to talk with, Irish
too. I’ve chatted with an Antarctic
researcher, pilots, networking contacts, and many frequent travelers. Every time I’ve had an interesting seat mate,
the flight has been memorable and fun.
KLM has a program to help facilitate having an interesting seat mate,
KML Meet & Seat.

KLM Meet and Seat

The premise of KLM Meet & Seat is you can link your Facebook
or Linked In profile to a seat map and see other passengers’ profiles.Find someone interesting, connect with them,
and sit next to each other on the flight.Sounds like a great idea with professional and personal benefits.KLM allows each person to control the amount
of profile information shared.You can
also contact the other person before the flight if you like.KLM Meet and Seat sounds like a fun and
innovate way to create a better flying experience.If your seat mate doesn’t work out, you can
always watch a movie or try to sleep, but those tactics aren’t new.

I also like how they are using the Boeing 787 Dreamliner in their images. It seems I'm not the only one excited about this airplane.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

My new Chase Sapphire Card is coming in the mail! I picked up the 50,000 point sign up bonus
(not on Chase.com any more, but on some banner ads still). I just need to spend
$3,000 in 3 months. I’m excited to have
it because my JP Morgan Palladium card didn’t have a sign up bonus and my Ultimate
Rewards (Chase points program) balance will be too small to do anything, but a
cheap 1 way on Southwest. That will
change soon. I’ll have a more detailed
review after I have a little time with the card.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Airlines have offered gift cards for years and they once
served a valuable purpose. It used to be
that gift cards were only accepted over the phone and using a gift card would
get the telephone reservation fee waived.
Due to advances in IT, most airlines can take gift cards online so the
fee waives are gone. US Airways is the exception
that still allows free telephone reservations with a gift card and are the only
ones worth buying.

Here is a rundown of airlines and gift cards:

US Airways CRJ-200 at ABQ

US Airways

You can buy a gift card online or at Walgreens. Any amount will let you ticket by phone
without a fee.

United Airlines CRJ-200 at ABQ

United Airlines

Now that Continental runs United, the free phone reservation
trick is gone. Gift certificates can be
purchased for use at United.com. Don’t
bother.

American Airlines

American Airlines can process gift cards on their website,
so they don’t waive the phone reservation fee.

Southwest Airlines Taking Off at ABQ

Delta

Delta gift certificates expire in 1 year and can only be used at a ticketing office
outside the US.

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Are you missing miles from a flight? Have an extra miles account? Is there an unexplained hole in your balance? Well there’s an address for that: MileagePlus
Service Center, P.O. Box 6120, Rapid City, SD 57709-6120. When something goes wrong with your account
and the people on the phone can’t help you, send a letter to the service
center. I needed to mail in a boarding
pass to them when Continental said I didn’t take a flight segment that I had. My mom had to write there to have her two
accounts combined into one. This is just
for Mileage Plus program items, not a general complaint inbox.

United Airlines A320 Taking Off From Albuquerque

Service and operational complaints should be
mailed to:Customer Care, United
Airlines, Inc., 900 Grand Plaza Drive NHCCR, Houston, TX 77067-4323. A written letter can make a more powerful impact than the web form complaint.

The United Club, nee President’s Club and Red Carpet Club, can
be reached at: United Club, P.O. Box 4555, Houston, TX, 77210-4555. I recommend sending a letter to complain
about the unpalatable coffee. Loud
customers are the only way a change will be made. While we are making demands, some soup and
finger sandwiches would be nice too.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Frontier Airlines is letting customers pick the next tail image. Voting is open here and you can
win $100 gift card for participating. I like
Frontier’s animal tails; they help make looking out the window at DEN fun. It’s also a very unique marketing ploy.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Update:Flat bed 757 seat review and 757 Business First to Europe review.Domestic First class isn’t what it used to be, even just a
few years ago, but it still is far better than sitting in economy. I decided it would be fun to compare first
class on United 757 against first class on United’s website. A few years ago, Northwest Airlines said that
only 14% of people in the domestic first class pays first class fares. United may have a slightly higher percentage
(fewer seats than NW), but I would be shocked if the number is over 20%. Since about 80% of first class passengers
didn’t pay to sit there, airlines are degrading the first class experience to
save money. It’s noticeable and I won’t
pay to fly first domestically, but upgrades still create some excitement.

United Airlines First Class Seat 757

Onboard Amenities

Extra-wide leather seats with expanded legroom. The seat is the star of the show. More width, more padding, more recline, and
more leg room. The seat is very
comfortable and something you can count on every flight. There is a wide area between the seats for
drinks and to create a bit of privacy.

Complimentary blankets available onboard for use during your
flight. Not always. Blankets are only found on overnight
flights. The blanket quality took a drop
with the Continental merger too; they are now see through and scratchy. Don’t look for a pillow day or night, those
are gone.

Pre-departure beverage service. It’s available only if the flight attendants
want to serve drinks. Continental crews
will 95% of the time, but United ones are closer to 75% of the time. Some crews offer water or OJ, other take
drink orders. You can always ask for
what you want, wine aside (flight crews don’t like opening bottles on the
ground), you should be able to get it.

Complimentary beer, wine, spirits, soft drinks and freshly
brewed coffee. All true. Same drinks as in coach, but the wine comes
in full size bottles. The new United
coffee isn’t very good though and Bailey’s isn’t always onboard to fix the
flavor issues. Drinking contests with
seatmates make the flight go much faster.

Hot towel service.
Towels are provided after takeoff.
I like to wipe down my seating area before the meal service. Towels used to become very dirty after this
process, but now they don’t find as much dirt.
This is my unscientific way to see that United is keeping their planes
much cleaner than in years past.

United Airlines First Class Seat 757 Legroom

Meal service on flights longer than two hours.I’ve always liked airline food, even the slop
served in coach when I was a kid, so digest this review with that in mind. United flights offer two items, omelet or fruit
plate for breakfast and usually pasta/salad or a sandwich/wrap for lunch and
dinner.Some meals also come with soup,
usually excellent (bad lunch review, good lunch review).A roll or salad is
also sometimes offered.The menu changes
about every month.Desert is a baked on
board cookie.They usually serve a great
chocolate chip cookie, but every once and a while mix it up with oatmeal raisin
or white chocolate cranberry.On flights
less than 2 hours, a snack basket is passed around with nuts, chips, Clif Bars,
and bananas.Not very inspiring,
Lufthansa does a meal service on short flights, United can just as easily.

Entertainment

Audio entertainment with complimentary headsets provided on
aircraft equipped with in-flight entertainment.
Better headsets than in coach, but your own might still be better.

Complimentary DIRECTV® on equipped aircraft (most 90%+ of the 737 fleet). Free live tv is standard on JetBlue, while
United charges $4 or $6 in coach. First Class
gets it for free and has the same ear buds as in coach.

United Airlines 757 at EWR Sunrise

Complimentary movies on all flights three hours or longer.This is a standard offering in all
cabins.They did show The Artist on a
recent flight, so not every inflight movie is garbage.

A complimentary copy of Hemispheres magazine. Every seat has a copy, not very special. Hemispheres is a better read than most
inflight magazines though.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

United Airlines launched a retro livery A320 two years ago. It looked pretty cool, but now they have one upped themselves with faxing boarding passes. I guess the assumption here is that people own stand alone fax machines that do not double as a printer. So very retro.